


nothing to prove (and i'm bulletproof)

by nosecoffee



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Allusions to canon events, Alternate Universe, Angst, Assassination, Assassination Attempt(s), Bart is wanted by the FBI, DGHDA Spookfest 2018, Dirk is trying to be helpful, F/M, Humour, Implied/Referenced Torture, Ken is trying his best, Lydia is an intern, M/M, Minor Character Death(s), Murder, Power Imbalance, Priest is awful, Roadtrip, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Todd needs sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 09:44:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: Ken sits up properly against the door and runs his hands down his face. "You scare the shit out of me." He moans."It's my job, Kenny Boy." Bart tuts and kicks her gun towards him, almost a sign of peace.(Or, the one where Bart is a trained assassin and Ken is the FBI agent assigned to catch her.)





	nothing to prove (and i'm bulletproof)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Dangerous Woman" by Ariana Grande
> 
> Written for the DGHDA SpookFest 2018
> 
> This was inspired by what little I know of Killing Eve

Even years after, Ken wishes he could rub this success in his family’s faces. For whatever reason, none of them ever believed he’d ever make anything of himself, always thought his abilities were mediocre at best, and that he’d end up a dead-end drunk like his father.

However, none of them could possibly deny how impressive it was that he’d been accepted by the FBI. His aunt had taken the time to kindly inform him that _these days they take any old dick who can hold a gun,_ before never speaking to him again. They all did that.

It’s been years now, but Ken’s gotten used to it, by now.

A folder smacks down on his desk and he jumps in fright, spilling his coffee a little bit. “Shit!” He cries, and looks up at whoever’s standing over him. It’s Nathan, and he’s grinning. His aunt was right about the dick thing.

“New assignment, Adams.” He drawls and crosses his arms over his chest. Ken sighs, looking up at him with a grimace. He and Weedle seem to be joined at the hip most of the time, and when they’re not, they're just plain weird, like they’re confused as to why no one’s finishing their sentences.

Plus they’re cocky and mean.

“I can’t.” He replies through clenched teeth. “I’ve already told Patrick that I’m working the Piranha investigation.” That interaction didn’t actually go down all that well. He actually asked Patrick if he could work the Piranha investigation and Patrick said _no, go back to working that cult thing._

Nathan rolls his eyes. “You already know Agent Black’s working that.”

Ken scoffs, “Eddie is _not-”_

  
“I meant his sister.”

“Right.” Right, Farah. Currently away on business, and the only reason Ken had had the guts to ask for the investigation. As far as Ken knows, she and Patrick are close (though not affair close, like Nathan and Sammy two floors down) and if she’d been here, she’d probably have ripped Ken to shreds in seconds. He knows she has all sorts of weapons training.

“Well, whatever, you have to do this. You can’t just turn down an assignment.”

Ken flips the folder open, and staring back at him is the woman he’s been covertly investigating for literal months.

"We call her the Piranha. She's an assassin, and she works for a secret government agency we believe is called Blackwing. It's estimated that she's killed over fifty people, including high-ranking government officials, celebrities, and civilians, in the last two years. She's been active for years, but has only recently come to our attention after a string of murders in the USA. Patrick’s decided you’re an asset in tracking her."

Ken looks up at Nathan, and then back down at the manila folder on the table in front of him. “Really?” He asks, a grin spreading over his face. Nathan shrugs, looking put out.

“Just don’t disappoint us, Adams.” He says on his way out of Ken’s broom closet office. “Director Spring’s putting a lot of faith into you.”

The Piranha in this picture has blue eyes, and red hair pulled into a pair of braids. There's a bruise to the right of her mouth and she's grinning at the camera. Below the picture it's cited that this is the mugshot from when she was arrested for holding up a service station, taken right before she broke free of her restraints and killed the person behind the camera, and everyone who she came across, as she left the police station.

Ken wonders why he didn't see anything about this on the news. Surely people notice when half a dozen police officers drop dead in Texas, one day. Surely people notice when a senator is shot dead in broad daylight, in a public park.

Apparently, the FBI has kept all of this under wraps, trying to get as much info on her killing patterns and her preferred methods of murder.

This is the clearest picture he’s ever had of her. Everything before now has been late-night surveillance camera tracking where she’s only a pale red headed blur, sometimes covered in blood, other’s not. And now this is his job. Tracking this woman who’s been wreaking chaos all over America for the last few years is his job, now.

~

Ken's sitting in his office, playing Minesweeper, when the door crashes open and Eddie Black rushes in. Ken exits the tab as quickly as he can. "What's going on?" He asks.

He sits next to Eddie on a bench outside when they have lunch, so they're pretty well acquainted at this point, even if they aren’t exactly friends. Not quite _bash down your door to tell you something_ acquainted.

"Get out here," Eddie pants, gesturing for Ken to join him out in the bullpen. "They're covering her on the news, they think she's chasing someone."

"Who?"

_"The Piranha."_

Ken pretty much vaults over his near empty desk and rushes after Eddie into the break room where the TV is on and playing the local news. There's shaky camera coverage and everyone stares as they watch a red headed woman in fireman coveralls running after two people in a Seattle street.

There's a burning car behind her, and she's holding a gun, shooting erratically at a red headed man in a green jacket.

"Oh my god." Eddie breathes, beside him, but Kens too busy staring at this woman too far away to see clearly, as she goes on the hunt. "Oh my _god,_ that's _Farah."_

"What?" Ken asks, managing to rip his eyes away from the screen. Eddie looks horrified.

He points at the TV screen. "There. The woman who's running, not the one with the gun." Ken looks where he's pointing and zeroes on the other person running from the Piranha. "That's Farah."

As soon as the words are out of Eddie's mouth, a shot rings out, and Farah drops to the ground. Eddie makes a shouting kind of sound, but Ken can't move at all. The redheaded man turns and runs towards Farah, and the Piranha stalks towards him, no longer running. She doesn't have to. She has them right where she wants them.

"Oh god." Eddie sobs, leaning against the wall to hold him up. The man on screen has hauled Farah into his lap and is holding his hands out to the Piranha. It's obvious he's pleading with her.

But the Piranha doesn't shoot him. She reaches them, and crouches down beside the man, talking to him, the gun sagging in her hand. She must be taunting him, because she gestures to Farah's still body. Then, she cocks the gun and presses the barrel to the man's temple. He's crying.

Ken looks away.

No shot rings out, but he hears screaming. A woman’s screaming. He looks up at the screen and Farah is sitting up, pressing a hand to the gunshot wound in her hip, the other hand gripping the handle of the knife plunged into the Piranha's thigh. Then she kicks the Piranha in the face and the man helps Farah to her feet enough for them to stumble away.

The camera follows them, obviously unimpressed with the Piranha's performance.

Eddie runs from the room, already dialling someone's number on his phone, and Ken is left standing in the break room, watching as Farah and her friend stumble towards the beginnings of a police blockade, screaming for help.

~

"We used to think that the Piranha had a hundred percent success rate, but after what we saw today, I'm beginning to think we overestimated her." Says Agent Weedle, across the room from Ken. Ken's just sitting there, taking notes.

"Don't let your guard down, Weedle, that's when you make mistakes." Says Patrick Spring, the director of the FBI. "We almost lost Agent Black in the field today, and that was because she underestimated our target. Right now, she's in hospital with a near-fatal injury."

"My apologies." Agent Weedle says and rolls his eyes at his lap.

"Agent Adams," Patrick says, and Ken startles, "were you able to gain anything from the coverage today?"

"Uh, well," Ken clears his throat, and glances at his notes. "For one, she's not a perfect assassin." This statement is followed by a soft murmuring and a few snorts. Nevertheless, he continues. "I think she and the guy we saw her chasing knew each other, and that's why she took the time to talk to him before attempting to kill him. Maybe she had a grudge?" He waves a vague hand. "Whatever, she has flaws. We also know that she's injured, now, so it'll probably be a while before we see her strike again."

Patrick nods. "What about how this links to previous killings?" He asks, and Ken doesn't even need to look at his notes when he answers, more confident, now.

"That's the weird part. Everything before now has been calculated, and executed perfectly. No trail, no witnesses. Easy for us to smooth over when people started panicking." Ken thinks of how little fuss she made while killing late night talk show hosts and congress members. "This time, however, she chased that guy through a _populated area_ in _broad daylight._ It's was unplanned - _lazy,_ even. This just enforces the grudge theory. It doesn't seem like she was ordered to do it."

No one's murmuring now, no one's snorting. They're all listening. To _him._ Suck it, Aunt Jean.

"Not only that, but the only significance I can see that this shooting had was that Agent Black is with the FBI, and was bringing that guy in for protection." He states, glancing down at the few pictures they'd gathered from the news broadcast of her chasing Agent Black and the guy they brought in, calling himself Dirk Gently. "They were practically _nobodies_ compared to other people she's targeted."

~

She's sitting sideways on her bed, back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. The bandage wrapped around her thigh has a pinprick of blood seeping through its white material, and she's mesmerised by watching it grow.

She had passed out by the time they arrived to collect her, and no one's said a word, so far, about what happened. Marzanna's glad. It's humiliating enough that she let Icarus get away and got injured by that FBI agent. If she heard anyone talking about it she'd just feel worse.

It's then that the door slides open and Priest steps inside. Oh, _good._ What she needs right now is this crazy bastard telling her what he thinks of her little stunt. He's holding a takeout box and a fork. Marzanna can smell it, even from across the room.

Sweet and sour pork. That _bastard._

"Lovely little scene you made, this afternoon, darlin’." He drawls, dragging a plastic chair across the room to sit opposite her bed. Priest takes a seat and places the takeout box in his lap. _"Really_ impressed everyone in the higher ups."

She grunts, and looks away, unwilling to let him get to her.

"Put the fear of God into Icarus, I'm sure." Breathe in, breathe out. _Don't listen. He's just here to rile you up._ "Oh, and you were caught in camera."

Marzanna doesn't say a word. Sometimes he gets bored if she ignores him enough. Usually that ends with a night in the straitjacket, though, or a day of standing with her hands chained above her while he dances around with various weapons that he uses so cruelly on her, and she's been through enough, today.

"Riggins is furious." Priest comments, tutting and opening the container, pulling a pair of chopsticks from his vest pocket. "You tried to kill his favourite little toy, under direct orders not to pursue."

"That traitor’s gonna tell ‘em everythin’." She mutters before she can stop herself.

Priest stops when he hears her speak and grins. _Dammit,_ she's given him exactly what he wanted. "Hm?" He hums, delighted. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of your failure, darlin'."

It's too late to go back to ignoring him. She's already taken the bait. "I was only tryna stop him from outin’ all of us." Marzanna says to him, slamming her hands down on the top of her quilt. Priests grin only widens when he sees her frustration. "Riggins might like to think that Icarus won't betray us, but he _ran,_ and he was with an _FBI agent._ I didn't have a choice."

"You disobeyed direct orders." He reminds her, in a sing-song tone, and then places a piece of pork in his mouth.

"So did _he!"_ She yells, only becoming more agitated from his prompting. "Only difference between him and me’s our loyalties." Priest raises an eyebrow and she glares at him. "Obviously, he was done listenin’ to your bitchin’."

That makes him stop chewing. "Icarus never made me bitch." Priest says to her, coolly. That's a problem. Priest who's maniacally cheerful is dangerous enough, but angry Priest is deadly. Still, she can't stop herself. Failure has never felt so heavy on her shoulders, humiliation never so drenching.

"Icarus had a failure streak so long you could play _jump rope_ with it!" Marzanna screams at him. She smacks the takeout box out of his hand. "I _slipped up_ tryin’ to do the _right thin’!"_

"You let your guard down." He growls.

Marzanna scoffs, "Well, _excuse me_ for thinkin’ a bullet wound would keep her down."

"She was an _FBI agent."_ Priest states, getting to his feet. "You should know _better."_

"How was I s’posed to know she had a knife?" She asks him, and gestures wildly with both hands, unable to pace around the room with a stabbed leg.

"You let your guard down to taunt Icarus," he retorts, pointing a finger in her face, as he pushes his chair away, "and _that_ was your mistake."

Marzanna takes a shaky breath and moves back across the bed to where she can sit with her back to the wall. "You think I shoulda killed him." She says, knowing it’s true, and knowing exactly what made her hesitate when the barrel of her gun was pressed to his head.

Priest snorts, still looking angry, but less so, now. Still, there's no way she can get out of this without some kind of punishment. That's why he's her handler; so that when she fucks up, he gives her more incentive not to. "I think that would be better than him runnin’ into the open arms of the FBI the minute you got a mild injury."

"He was always Riggins' favourite." Marzanna murmurs, angrily. "Even _after_ he ran. I can't do anythin’ right, in his eyes. I'm not good enough. Never will be."

He kneels on the edge of her bed, a dangerous look on his face. "Startin’ to believe it, are you?" Priest asks.

 _"Never."_ She spits back in his face. "I'm the best assassin you've ever had."

"No." He whispers, leaning in, over her, close enough for her to smell his breath. Oh, how she hates him. "You _were."_ Priest presses the heel of his palm down against her stab wound and she screams, trying to push him off her. But the pain is too much and she doesn't have the strength. All she can do is push, madly, at his shoulders as she writhes in pain, kicking out.

Priest laughs over her screams and leans in sniffing at her hair. She's disgusted by him. "You should get injured more often." He murmurs in her ear, easing up for a second, before pressing back down and forcing another scream from her throat. "I hear your victims screams too often, not enough of yours."

She sobs, and, on instinct, leans into him, moving towards the skin of his neck. She aims to rip his throats out with her teeth, but just when she tastes the iron of his blood, he lets up, pulling away. She slumps down onto the covers, breaths heaving out of her on waves of sobs, blood on her lips.

He laughs, pressing a hand to his neck, looking delighted. Priest gets off the bed and picks up the takeout container on his way out of her room. _"That_ was excitin’." The door slides shut behind him. Her fist scrunched the sheet in her hand and she glares at the door. The minute she gets out of here, he's the first on her list.

~

After they briefed him, Dirk Gently joined Ken's task force. That task force being him and the intern, Lydia, who brought him coffee and sat in the corner with earbuds in, listening to podcasts.

As it turns out, Dirk is key to this investigation, having been a part of Blackwing since he was twelve. He's an analyst, and a bloody fucking good one, at that. He helps Ken create maps with pins where the Piranha's struck, attaching names and fatalities to the pins. So far there's no patterns. Just big names or people who got in her way.

Dirk doesn't know all that much about her, just that she's Blackwing's resident assassin, she went after him because he got away and was going to spill secrets, and that her code name is Marzanna.

"What does _Marzanna_ mean?" Ken asks, after reading the name on a new sheet of info.

"She's the Slavic goddess of death and rebirth." Replies Lydia from the corner, helpfully. Ken is somewhat unnerved by the fact that a) she could hear them, and b) she knew the answer off the top of her head. She shrugs at him when he stares and goes back to playing Solitaire on her phone.

Either way, having Dirk working alongside him is more helpful than Ken would like to say. Patrick has put a lot of faith into him. He just hopes he can keep it up.

~

After forensics have been and gone, Ken manages to catch surveillance footage of Marzanna fleeing the car she just killed a senator in. Everyone’s fussing about how to block the media and how she got from Seattle to DC so fast, but Ken’s too busy tracking her via surveillance cameras.

He thinks he's got her for a minute, and then she climbs into a black van and every security camera after that has been wiped clean.

Ken turns in what little evidence he has anyway.

~

Marzanna cracks her neck and aims a kick at the dummy’s face. She's been on two assignments since her failed assassination, and she has yet to regain anyone’s favour. Thankfully, she hasn't seen Priest since she tried to rip his throat out, so she can count her lucky stars for the moment.

She's tired of the easy kills. It's so quick and impersonal. She wants to actually have some say, more than just seeing a target and taking a shot. More than climbing into some senators cab and shooting him dead right there. More than a file in front of her and a gun in her hands.

It was so much better before she slipped up, the first time. They trusted her back then. Trusted her enough to answer when they called with a new assignment, that was on her own terms. She picked her weapon, she picked her vehicle and her outfit. She cared about the outcome of each assignment because she got the hunt before the kill.

She wasn't forced to live in a locked room until they had something for her to do, she was free, living in her own house, buying her own groceries, being her own person. One little mistake, threatening some cashier at a service station, getting arrested, gutting a few people on her way out of the station and suddenly she was “dangerous” and “unstable”.

Marzanna huffs. _Newsflash,_ she thinks, _you made me this way._

~

They bring in a guy who worked at the Perriman Grand before Marzanna killed the owner with a crossbow to the chest. His name is Todd Brotzman and he was a bellboy. He saw the whole thing, but Marzanna didn't see him. He was hiding behind a door. He got lucky.

After the higher ups have briefed him, they send him into Ken’s cramped little office, where Lydia’s sitting in the corner and Dirk’s standing on Ken’s desk, trying to fit a new pin into the Seattle area. They're going to need new, bigger, more detailed maps.

Ken waves hello through Dirk’s legs. “Hi, you must be Todd. Take a seat.” Todd looks around dubiously, before taking a cautious seat in Dirk’s wheely chair. Ken steps out from the corner where he was trapped by Dirk and greets Todd properly, with a handshake. “I'm Ken, this is Lydia, and that's Dirk.”

Dirk glances over his shoulder and promptly tumbles off the desk and into the wall. “Ow,” he says from where he's crumpled on the carpet in the corner.

Ken nods. “He's another witness, you might have seen him on the news a few weeks ago, being chased by Marzanna with a gun.”

Todd nods, slightly, peeking over the desk to stare, quizzically, at Dirk. “He's the one who was with Farah when she got shot.” He says, and Ken raises his eyebrows.

“You know her?” Dirk asks, getting to his feet and rubbing his left elbow with a grimace.

“She's a friend.” Todd answers, in a clipped tone, almost _this is none of your business._ Ken needs to steer everything in the right direction so that Todd can help them out.

“Can you tell us everything about what happened this afternoon, Todd? We need as much information as we can.”

Todd gives them a stutter-filled retelling of the story Ken’s already heard. It's not until Dirk asks him to describe what she was wearing that they actually hit a goldmine. “On the back of her jacket there was this symbol-”

“A symbol?” Dirk perks up, looking like a dog that just saw a tennis ball get thrown in his direction. “What did it look like?”

Todd stares at him and stutters a bit before managing to get out, “It's hard to describe.”

Ken shakes his head and rummages under piles and piles of debriefed amd files and forensic reports. “Here, draw it.” He hands Todd a notepad and a pencil. Whatever they can get out of this is helpful, he reminds himself.

“Oh...thanks?” What Todd draws looks like a little circle hovering over a lopsided and disproportioned _M._ Dirk grins when he sees it.

“Ken, put this in the system.” Dirk says, handing the notepad to Ken. “If any cameras pick up this specific symbol we’ll know it's her.”

Ken sighs, knowing Dirk means well, but seeing a pretty big flaw in his plan. “How can you know she'll always wear something with that symbol on it?” He asks, trying to be as gentle as possible. Lydia pumps her fist in the air as she wins another round of Solitaire.

“Because there's a tattoo of it on her neck. We all have one.” Dirk replies simply. At everyone's dumbfounded look, Dirk sighs and loosens his tie, pulling his collar down to showcase a geometric tattoo on the space just underneath the curve of his jaw, by his right ear. “See? It's their way of saying we belong to them.”

“That's sick.” Todd stutters and all eyes turn to him. He goes bright red. “Not in like a good way, in a bad way, but like it's also good that you got out?”

“Thank you, Todd.” Dirk grins and Ken just keeps back a groan, opening a new tab in his computer to implement Dirk’s plan. Todd’s grinning back. He has a feeling their partnership is going to cause him all kinds of trouble.

~

This has never happened before. Marzanna has never failed an assignment before (at least, she's never failed an assignment given to her by Riggins, not an assignment given to her by her own brain), so failing _and_ being kidnapped is pretty bad, in her books.

She wonders what Priest will say when she gets back. Maybe this time she’ll actually rip his throat out. Maybe this time he'll leave her hanging by her wrists in that awful cold room where he tortures her when she pisses him off.

Marzanna is having trouble breathing through the bag they’ve put over her head, but that's the least of her worries. She's only wearing her underwear, tied to a chair, ankles to the legs, and wrists together and to the ruts in the back of the chair. They've also looped some rope around her waist to keep her from squirming.

Their knots aren't perfect, though, so she's not panicking yet. No, she'll panic when they slit her throat.

~

Dirk gives a loud yell that startles Ken enough to spill his coffee. Thankfully, he moves his laptop out of the way before the coffee can reach it. He glares at Dirk, but Dirk isn't looking at him. He's staring at his computer screen.

“Ken, someone’s got her.” He says, quietly.

“What?” Ken replies, eloquently, still holding his laptop up, more focused on the mess he's made and has to clean up.

“Come look at this.” Dirk waves him over, frantically, eyes fixed on the screen. “It’s a livestream, these guys have Marzanna.”

Ken takes a look at what's on Dirk’s screen and sees a pretty seedy looking website with a video entitled _Watch This Psychopath Get What She Deserves._ “How do you know?” He asks, tiredly, not sure that Dirk’s right. This could definitely be a hoax, and probably is.

“Look at the thumbnail.” Ken does. The woman in the thumbnail has a black bag over her head and is tied to a chair by her waist wrists and ankles. She's only wearing her underwear. There's a long pink scar on her thigh, right where Farah stabbed her.

“Oh, fuck.” Ken groans and runs to get his phone, dialling Patrick’s number. Neither of them were supposed to stay this late, but they're both too invested. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he mutters, waiting for the director of the FBI to pick up his damn phone.

“Ken?” Calls Dirk’s wavering voice. “It's starting.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Ken leaves his phone ringing, but puts it on speaker so he can go and kneel next to Dirk to watch the livestream of what he thinks is Marzanna’s torture and inevitable murder.

She's shuffling in her chair, shuffling against her restraints, and there's a deep laugh behind the camera. Ken feels queasy. No one deserves this, not even a serial killer. He picks up his computer and opens up a tab, trying to work as fast as he can.

Tracking an IP address is hard anyway, but doing it while under pressure is pretty fucking terrifying as well. The person behind the camera starts talking, but Ken can't register the words, pulling up the right website.

A gloved hand reaches into view of the camera and pulls the bag off her head. There she is, Marzanna in all her glory, probably the cleanest Ken has ever seen her. And she's grinning. There's the tattoo on her neck, like Dirk said, and there's that same look in her eye that had been there in her mugshot.

 _“Hello?”_ Patrick’s sleepy voice says on the other end of the line, and Ken scrambles to pick up the phone.

“Evening, sir, someone's posted a livestream, on the internet, they have Marzanna, and I think they're going to torture and-slash-or kill her.” Ken says as fast and as clear as possible. “I'm trying to track their IP address right now, but the livestream’s only just started.”

 _“Oh..._ shit.” Says Patrick’s way more awake voice.

“I need you to do your director thing and get people ready for when I track the address.” He continues and glances up at Dirk who looks both horrified and mesmerised by whatever the guy behind the camera is saying about the grinning, restrained Marzanna.

 _“Alright, keep me updated, Adams.”_ Patrick says, all business, and hangs up. Right. Ken focuses in on finding the IP address. This is going to be a long night. He hopes their kidnapper is the patient type.

~

Marzanna has almost completely gotten the knots on her wrists undone by the time her masked kidnapper has finished his monologue on the greater good. Thinks he's a regular vigilante, apparently. She does respect his abilities, truly, as he managed to catch her unawares, but he could do with more work in the knot-tying department.

Marzanna’s made a point of grinning at the camera the whole time, while taking the time to lazily figure out her surroundings. At least whoever’s tuning to this guys livestream can be unnerved by her. Maybe someone from Blackwing’s seeing this and panicking. Priest wouldn't panic. He knows what she's capable of.

He'd probably have a fucking ball if this guy gutted her on camera. Her hands come undone, but she makes no move to attack her kidnapper. Instead she begins to undo the bonds around her waist. That'll be more noticeable to everyone, but that doesn't matter. This guy in the stupid mask will be dead in the seconds that follow the rope coming undone in her hands, and that will be _ever so satisfying._

~

Ken’s just figured out where this guy is holding their assassin when he round her chair and holds a knife to her throat. He sees her freeze, and Dirk, beside him, tenses up.

 _“Weren't expecting that, huh?”_ Asks the masked kidnapper. Ken puts the address into a text to Patrick who immediately responds with a thumbs up emoji. God, who knew the director of the FBI was a fucking dork.

 _“Actually,”_ Marzanna rasps, and Ken stops dead. He's never heard her speak before, and her voice is both a perfect fit for her and so, so different to her appearance. _“I do have a few thin’s to say.”_

Ken suspects that if the kidnapper’s face was visible he'd be frowning in surprise and irritation. Dirk glances down at him with a look of terror and amusement and Ken looks back with what he hopes is a similar expression.

 _“Sorry?”_ He says, sounding bewildered and caught off guard. That's so weird, really. This guy is surprised that the psychopathic serial killer assassin interrupted him.

 _“Yeah, I jus’ figure you're gonna kill me real soon, so I should say my goodbyes.”_ Marzanna says, twisting to look over her shoulder at him. _“Sounds smooth, yeah? Get it all out of the way?”_

The masked kidnapper stumbles over his words for a moment, before pushing her to face forward, again, and accusing, _“You're stalling.”_

 _“Nah. I need to say goodbye to my mama.”_ Marzanna replies, huffing. _“Mama! I love you! You were always good to me…”_ Marzanna trails off into Spanish, speaking much faster than Ken can translate. Ken looks up at Dirk.

“Didn't you say you grew up in Blackwing?” He asks, and Dirk shakes himself out of whatever daze he fell into while watching the livestream.

“We all did.” Dirk replies, giving the woman on screen a conflicted look. He looks terrified of her and what she's capable of, but also sad, as if he’s sorry about how she ended up. Ken follows where Dirk’s looking, and sees the amount of tiny silver scars that litter her hips and ribs. There are longer ones every so often. Ken feels sick. He wonders if they're self inflicted, or if they're the end result of torture. Dirk swallows. “She's definitely stalling.”

“Good,” Ken says, trying not to think about all the complexities of this woman with a knife to her throat on the computer screen. “That gives us more time than I thought.”

~

The guy is digging the point of his knife into her neck and Marzanna trails off as it becomes harder and harder to speak without causing herself injury. He's getting sick of her very obvious stalling. She's nearly got the knot on the rope around her waist undone is the only problem, but she can't really get out of this situation until it's undone.

And this guy is getting impatient.

She's not panicking, yet. No.

_Pick, pick, pick, pull, pull, tug._

She grins.

“Actually, there’s somethin’ I have to ask you.” She says, speaking clearly and loudly, despite the knife. It drags against her skin as she speaks and Marzanna gasps quietly when she feels a bit of blood begin to run down her neck.

“What now?” The guy groans. Marzanna reaches up and grabs his wrist, pulling the knife away and twisting until he releases the knife with a cry of pain. With that, she cuts the ropes at her ankles and grabs his throat with her free hand, standing up from her spot on the chair. For good riddance, she thrusts her knee up between his legs to make his knees buckle.

“Where’re my fuckin’ clothes?” She growls. He points, faintly, to the corner and she releases his throat. He's still coughing when she returns with the pile of her clothes. “I don't see why I had to be half naked to do this. Do you have a kink or somethin’?”

He doesn't answer, just tries to scramble away.

Marzanna sighs, frustratedly, and pursues him across the floor. “I'm tired of this game, pal. Sorry.” She lifts the neck of his mask and slashes, neatly, at his throat. He gurgles as he dies, choking on his own blood.

Bart gets dressed in this time, and by the time she's dressed, he's stopped moving. She remove his mask and gets a good look at his still, pale face. He's rather young, which is a bit of a shame. It's too late now, though. Marzanna drags his heavy, stiffening body across the floor and props him up in her chair. She shoots a quick peace sign at the camera and makes her way towards the exit behind the camera.

~

The FBI agents Patrick sent enter through a door behind the now-dead kidnapper, about five minutes after Marzanna left. Dirk and Ken are silent. Neither of them was expecting Marzanna to break free of her bonds so violently and to slit some kids throat.

Because he is a kid. He looks barely eighteen. The FBI agents inspect his body and someone turns off the camera. Dirk closes his laptop and licks his lips.

“She's way more dangerous than you can imagine.” He murmurs, and picks up his bag as he exits. Ken swallows deeply and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to get rid of the image of the way Marzanna propped that kids body up and _grinned_ at the camera.

She's way more _psychotic_ than he could imagine.

~

She's featured on the news, a picture of the way she peace signed the camera after killing her kidnapper featuring while newscasters call her names and list off her many offences, playing a tape of when she chased Icarus through the streets of Seattle.

Marzanna is pretty pleased with herself. No one else is pleased with this development. Priest does crack a little grin when he drags her to the room with the chains attached to the roof, but other than that, she can't tell what he thinks.

When she's patched back up, and left alone in her room, she sighs and closes her eyes. They should have known she wouldn't blink a message in morse code at the camera to let them know where she was. She's not that kind of person. They know her better than anyone, they know what she's capable of, they taught her how to do it, after all.

They should have known better than to think she wouldn't pull a stunt like that.

~

“Do you remember anything before being in Blackwing?” Ken asks, one day when Lydia’s gone to get them all coffee and Todd’s stuck at the photocopier.

Dirk looks up from the game of Minesweeper Ken already knows he’s playing instead of doing any of his paperwork. He gives Ken a dazed, bewildered look, and says, “What?”

“Sorry,” Ken winces, “I’m just working on loose ends, and I was wondering if Blackwing had you all from birth or whether-”

“I had a mother.” Dirk interrupts, suddenly, looking more morose than usual. In fact, looking morose at all wasn’t something Ken was aware Dirk was able to do, until now. “I lived with her until I was eight. She was Romanian...I suppose I was, too. We spoke it at home, and we lived in a tiny apartment in London.”

It’s insane to think that Dirk had a family, once, and more insane to think that all of a sudden, at eight years old, he didn’t. “What about your dad?” Ken probes.

Dirk shrugs. “Never had one. I don’t know where he was, but my mom always said we’d find him.” He rolls his eyes, and looks back down at his phone. “Very complicated.”

“What happened to her?” Not his business he knows, but Ken’s a naturally curious person.

“No idea.” He doesn’t seem fussed by talking about this, and Ken wonders if Farah knows about all of this, wonders if he confessed all this when she tried to bring him in. “I woke up one day and I was in Blackwing. They told me my mother was dead, that she died when our apartment building burnt down.”

Ken can’t imagine being eight years-old and being told all he had left of his family was dead. Even though they never speak nowadays, at eight he would have been distraught. “Have you searched for her?”

“Sure,” Dirk answers, and shrugs helplessly. “But the problem is I don’t remember her legal last name.”

Ken frowns. “Wait, so Dirk gently isn’t your legal name?” He asks.

“It is. Now.” Dirk assures him with a vaguely cheeky smile, blinding in comparison to how small and dark he’d looked only moments before. “But the name on my birth certificate would be Svlad.”

“Oh.” Somehow, that’s not as surprising as Ken thinks it should be.

“Like I said,” he sighs, “it’s all very complicated.”

“Is there a chance that Marzanna had something before Blackwing?” Ken asks, just fishing for the answer that will crack this investigation right open.

Dirk shrugs. “Probably.”

~

Farah returns from her extended leave when the leaves start turning more brown than red, and Lydia practically tackles her upon her entrance. Ken didn’t know they were close. She takes about five minutes greeting everyone with a smile and reassuring those who get particularly emotional before she grabs Dirk and Ken by the elbows and leads them away. Todd and Lydia exchange a look and hurry after them.

Farah deposits them in Ken’s broom closet office, and closes the door once Lydia and Todd are inside, leaning against it. “Tell me everything you guys have on her.” She says, looking dead fucking serious and pretty damn pissed.

Ken doesn’t even hesitate. If anyone’s gonna lead them straight to wherever Marzanna’s hiding, it’ll be Farah.

~

“We have reason to believe you're being monitored.” Priest says to her, one evening when he's sitting by her bed, pretending to read a book while she eats dinner.

Marzanna grunts in response, sure that even if she remained silent he'd still ramble on about it, since it's probably why he's here.

“We think the FBI has someone following your every move.” He continues and Marzanna rolls her eyes at her rice, right once again. “They've tracked you on every mission since Icarus’s escape, thus far.”

“Why do I care?” She asks through a mouthful of tough chicken.

He gives her a sly smile that she doesn't like one bit. “Because one of these days, they'll track our vehicles back to the base, darlin’ and it'll be all our heads.” Priest answers, simply, and Marzanna wonders what that would mean for her. She supposes it would mean that Blackwing would get busted and she'd be put away in a new, proper kind of prison. She gulps, nervously, and she knows he sees it, because he grins wider. “Best be more careful. Wouldn't want the FBI’s hands on you.”

~

Ken walks into the copy room and turns around immediately when he catches sight of Dirk and Todd kissing against a wall by the printer.

There's a crashing noise, and Ken closes the door behind him, knowing they’ll want their privacy, especially since that crashing noise sounded a lot like the printer falling off its cabinet. They'll probably want their privacy now that Ken knows all about that.

Lydia gives him a quizzical look but Ken just shakes his head, hoping to convey _you don't want to know._

~

He hands her a file and Marzanna flips it open, lazily. The man in the picture has a full beard that’s all salt and pepper. He’s wearing a pressed suit and an unimpressed look on his face.

“Target’s name is Patrick Spring. He’s the director of the FBI, the people currently tryin’ to track you down. They have Icarus and an agent skilled in hacking on their side.” Priest says, gesturing to some small text on the opposite page from the picture. “They sent agents to your location when you were kidnapped and they arrived minutes after you left. Get rid of this man, it will slow down their investigation.”

Marzanna chews, absently, on a fingernail and looks up at Priest. “Let me pick my weapon.” She says to him, and grins, listlessly when he rolls his eyes.

“You know you’re not allowed to pick anymore, darlin’.” He reminds her in his cruel sing-song voice.

She hates it when he calls her _darlin’._ “Let me pick or I won’t do it.” She says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“We could force you.” Priest says, but it’s not convincing. They’ve never forced her before, she’s always been compliant.

“Oh, sure, but Riggins won’t be happy if you send me into the field with a few broken fingers.” At this, Priest slams his fist into the tabletop and Marzanna barely flinches at all.

“Stop talkin’ back.” He warns her in a cold voice, and Marzanna grins, against her better judgement.

“Thought you liked that?” She says cheekily, well aware what this goading will lead her into.

He slaps her. Marzanna laughs on an exhale and stares up at him with what she hopes looks like admiration. She does admire him, in a way. No one has ever disgusted her so thoroughly, in her life, so she admires how much effort he puts into being disgusting. Now, he stares down at her, nostrils flaring. “Talk back again and I’ll let you pick the weapon I use on you, understand, brat?”

“Sounds like a plan.” She drawls. “Can I take a rain check, though?” He grabs her hair and drags her upright.

A voice suddenly interrupts what he’s about to snarl at her, a woman’s voice, _“Osmund, control your temper.”_ Marzanna knew they had someone listening to every conversation, so why they’ve never stopped him before she doesn’t know. Something drops in her stomach.

They let him hurt her until now.

Priest releases her, and Marzanna drops, numbly back into her seat, all goading and carelessness gone from her. “If you see the hacker, Agent Ken Adams, do not hesitate to kill him, either. In fact, once Director Spring is dead, hunt down Adams.” Another folder, this one containing a picture of a black man with short-cropped hair and a funny look on his face. It’s obviously a candid, because he looks like he’s in the middle of saying something. Marzanna taps on the edge of his picture. He looks so unworried, so carefree. It’ll be a shame when she kills him. “He already knows too much. He’s the one who watched you on every assignment since you attempted to kill Icarus. Consider this a chance at redemption.”

~

They’re all making their way into the underground parking lot after a long day of searching through missing childs reports from twenty one years ago and surveilling various important premises. Lydia’s been staying later and later each night.

What surprises Ken the most is that Patrick walks with them. He’s known him for a couple of years now, but Patrick usually keeps to himself, and the fact that he’d decide to join their group on the way out is a little surprising. It’s surprising how easily he falls into banter with Lydia, how he smiles at Farah.

They’re in the mostly empty parking lot, laughing at a stupid dorky joke Patrick just made that Lydia’s wincing and laughing at, when a shot rings out and everyone jumps. Farah immediately whips out one of her guns and turns in a slow, calculating circle, trying to find the source of the gunshot. Ken’s just staring at the support beam a bullet is now embedded in.

“FBI, come out with your hands up!” Farah yells. Dirk’s already ducked around a support beam and is dragging a reluctant Todd over to join him. Patrick has Lydia behind him, pressed to his back, looking around uneasily. Ken has a horrible feeling about this.

Another shot and Patrick gives a yell. He goes to his knees and Lydia screams. There’s blood blooming in the front of his white dress shirt. “Dad!” Lydia cries, catching him when he falls backwards and dragging him, helplessly, behind a car. Farah looks shocked and terrified.

Too much is going on. Ken looks towards where the shot came from and sees Marzanna, behind the hood of a nondescript Sedan, looking between all of them. Her eyes lock with Ken’s.

She winks.

Farah spots her and immediately shoots. Marzanna ducks and laughs. “Gonna need a better shot than that!” She yells, giggling, and shooting again. This shot barely misses Farah, and Farah shouts in frustration.

“Surrender, right now!” Farah says, ducking behind the same car that Patrick and Lydia are seated beside. Lydia’s frantically pressing a section of her cardigan to Patrick’s chest - Patrick, her _father._

“Someone help me!” Lydia yells, and Ken can see, now, she’s crying. Patrick’s holding her shoulder and gazing at her with a look in his eye that he knows he’s about to die. Todd and Dirk make a run for the car they’re crowded by and Todd helps Lydia in trying to stem the blood flow.

Farah look over at Ken, and gasps. “What the fuck are you doing? Get over here!” Ken realises he’s still standing out in the open. Instead of doing as Farah says, he looks back over at Marzanna and she waves, smiling.

“‘ey, Kenny Boy!” She calls. Farah takes a shot and Marzanna actually looks shocked at how close it was to hitting her. She makes a run for the exit of the parking lot and Farah fires again. This one seems to hit her, because she stumbles. Her leg is bleeding. Marzanna looks over her shoulder, wincing. “See you later!”

None of Farah’s remaining shots hit her, and Marzanna disappears from view. Todd’s already on the phone to an ambulance while Dirk replaces him in trying to keep Patrick conscious and as full of blood as possible. Lydia is still crying, and Patrick’s still staring at her.

“I wasted my time with you.” Ken hears him say when he approaches.

“No, dad, you didn’t,” Lydia replies, touching his cheek, and sobbing. “You’re gonna be okay, okay? We’re getting an ambulance.”

“I love you.” He sighs, leaning back against the car, eyes closing.

“Dad, no, please!” Lydia yells and presses harder against his chest. Farah stares down in shock and fear. Ken do nothing but stand there.

~

The name she rented the car under was “Bart Copenhagen”. Ken searches the name “Bart” into the various missing person sites open on his phone, at the hospital, and finds a missing persons report written up for seven year old Bartine Curlish in 1997. The little girl in the picture is ginger and has a pretty smile and big blue eyes. She went missing from Hampton, South Carolina and was never found.

He clicks his phone off and puts his face in his hands, waiting for news.

~

Bart can’t move. She’s safe here. At Blackwing they’ll just keep hurting her, just keep punishing her, and sending her out to do something she’s not passionate about, something she’s not sure that she actually wants to do, at all.

Here - wherever here is - is where she’s safe, at least for now. Bart closes her eyes and breathes through the smell of blood on her skin.

~

He’s been there all night. He’s gotten up only about three times - once to use the toilet, once to get snacks from the vending machine, once to wander because he’s bored. Ever since Patrick died, he hasn’t been able to get her out of his head. The way she’s peeked over the hood of her car and yelled at him with a grin.

Ken can’t stop thinking about how he was standing out in the open and she didn’t even point her gun at him. She just laughed and smiled and killed Patrick and ran away into the night with a bleeding calf.

He’s flicking between surveillance cameras he hacked around the last place she was last seen when he sees someone digging their way out from under the trash in a dumpster in an alleyway. Bart’s ragged red head emerges from under a black bag of rubbish. She was hiding in a dumpster the whole time, not taken away by her covert illegal government agency.

Ken pick up his phone to call Patrick, and then remembers that Patrick’s dead. He’s so distracted by this that he doesn’t see the guy with the gun until it’s too late.

Bart doesn’t see him, either. She’s too busy retying a blood soaked rag around the injury in her calf to see the guy until he shoots her.

Bart goes down quicker than Ken expects. He’s seen her shot before, but that was different. That was a graze to her leg. This is a point-blank shot to her stomach. He can see that she’s screaming, but there’s no sound so he can’t hear it.

Her attacker rummages through her pockets and upon coming up empty grabs her by the front of her shirt and shakes her, yelling something. Obviously this guy isn’t aware that Bart doesn’t own a wallet. A minute later he runs away, leaving Bart to bleed out on the floor of the alley.

It would be fitting to let her die alone and scared and in pain the way she left Patrick, and Ken would relish the thought that he allowed that to happen, he really would. Then he remembers how she grinned at him. How she obviously doesn’t see anything wrong with what she’s doing, how she was taken in and conditioned to be this way. He remembers that in this case, he’s better than her.

Ken calls an ambulance.

~

She sees the flashing lights through her closed eyes, red and blue, and sighs. It’s finally over. They’ve got her.

Bart relaxes into their hold as they load her into the back of the ambulance, and wonders how pissed Priest is before passing out, properly.

~

Farah’s pacing outside the room in the hospital where they’ve kept Bart after her surgery. Ken hasn’t had the guts to approach her, yet. She’s still dressed in black from Patrick’s funeral earlier in the day. She still looks completely and utterly bereaved.

She looks up, however when Ken approaches. And she smiles a bit, so at least there’s that.

“You _caught_ her.” Farah says in greeting, and gestures vaguely to the door behind her. “You actually _did_ it.”

“After Patrick…” Ken says, but Farah cuts him off with an understanding nod and somewhat watery smile.

“I get it.” Her hand is on his wrist, a comforting pressure on his skin. “I can’t wait to question her and then put her away for the rest of her life.”

“It’s just so weird.” Ken comments, frowning at the door. “She had _every_ chance to run - and she’s fast, she’d know what to do, how to evade us if I actually saw her. She wasn’t slow on her leg when she left the parking garage, but a _stranger with a gun_ caught her off guard.” Farah frowns too. “Does that seem weird to you?”

“I mean, sure,” she replies, uneasily, “but we also haven’t seen her since that guy got her and tried to kill her on a livestream. Who knows what’s changed about her, since then?”

Ken considers this, casting an absent glance at her closed door. Farah’s got a point. There was practically radio silence for a few weeks between her kidnapping and Patrick’s death. They know she’s in Blackwing, and Ken saw the scars on her body on the livestream. It seems more and more likely that whoever she’s working for has a sadistic idea of how to make her obedient.

What if that's why she slipped up? What if she just didn’t want to go back?

Ken nods at her, thoughts running wild in his head, “Hold that thought.” He runs towards the parking lot, glad he had the foresight to bring his laptop.

~

She wakes with a start, and immediately gasps in pain. The pain is coming from her belly. The room she’s in is dark, the curtains drawn, but Bart can feel that her arms are tied to the sides of her bed. Her ankles are similarly tied to the end of the bed, and her head is propped up by rustling pillows

Thankfully, Bart finds, she isn’t too restrained to pull back the covers and her hospital gown to inspect whatever’s causing the pain beneath. There’s a bandage, and, when she peels the corner of that back, angry black stitches holding two flaps of skin together, just to the right side of her bellybutton.

It comes back in a rush, the masked guy with the gun, the way he’d shaken her, and all she could do was scream and loll like a rag doll. How someone had finally gotten the best of her. How perhaps that didn’t bother her, since going back would just mean more punishment, more anger, more disappointment.

Going back would just give Priest another reason to rip her open and watch what slides out.

However, this isn’t ideal. The FBI has her, and has her while she’s injured. That puts her at a great disadvantage. They’ll probably lock her up forever, just like they do back at Blackwing, the only good thing she can see coming from this is that no sadistic old man will come in to torture her, every so often in prison.

Bart takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and pulls at her restraints. She wonders who called the ambulance.

~

She’s gone, when Ken and Farah go in to question her. The covers of her bed are pulled back and the restraints cut in half, bits still hanging to the railing of the bed. Farah immediately rattles off a few orders and the hospital goes into lockdown, but Ken can already tell Bart is long gone.

He checks the hospital’s security cameras and identifies the moment she escaped, hunched over in her hospital gown, a scalpel clutched in her fist. She steals a red subaru from the parking lot and speeds off into the night.

Ken shows this to Farah and she bangs her head into the wall a few times before marching off, yelling something about needing a moment.

~

Days pass. There are no sightings of Bart, anywhere, though Ken officially adds her missing persons report from 1997 to their collective data on her.

Farah gets promoted to Director of the FBI in Patrick’s stead, and gracefully accepts the position, immediately falling into her duties to drown out the grief of Patrick’s death. Lydia’s away, visiting relatives, and Ken hopes she doesn’t come back too soon.

Leaves start to fall from trees, Ken hears them crunch under his feet as he walks from the bus stop to the front door of his building.

Ken pretends not to notice something going on between Todd and Dirk, the subtle flirting and the moments when he rounds the corner and they pull away from each other, immediately, trying not to look guilty. Whatever, it’s none of his business.

He accepts that he’s officially lost Bart.

~

She's sitting in his recliner chair when he arrives home. Ken wishes he wasn't so surprised. He screams when he sees her, and drops his paper bag of groceries, but Bart doesn't look bothered.

"Close the door." She says, gesturing with her loaded gun.

Ken shakily closes the door behind himself. He knows better than to disobey her, because he knows what she’s capable of doing to him. An apple rolls across the floor and bumps against Bart's blood-stained Converse shoe. He was going to dip it in caramel, the way his mom used to, it's coming up to Halloween, it's the only time he misses his family.

His hands are raised above his head. He had no idea she could just track people like this, just find their houses and enter with little to no difficulty, but apparently she can, if she's actually sitting there.

"So, Ken," she begins, resting her elbow on her knee, continuing to aim her gun at him. "You're a pretty good hacker, aren't you."

He stares at her. "What?"

Bart snorts, irritated. There's little dots of blood all over her, especially near her belly, where she was shot, and a smear to the left of her mouth. "You're a good hacker? Right?"

Ken nods, cautiously. "Right." He agrees. "Why?"

She pokes her tongue against the inside of her cheek. "I need help."

More staring, more silence. He feels more and more unnerved by this interaction by the second. She's wearing high-waisted shorts and a white t-shirt with red sleeves that has Donald Duck on the front. It's been ripped at the collar, and hangs open over her collarbones. There’s a dark bruise high up on her cheekbone.

He wonders wear she got the clothes, and who she fought who actually managed to injure her.

 _"My_ help?" Ken asks slowly, lowering his hands as he gestures to himself.

Bart rolls her eyes. "No, Casper the Friendly FBI Agent's help." She drawls sarcastically, and then chuckles a bit when she finds herself funny. _"Yes, your help."_

He frowns at her, "But weren't you sent to kill me?"

 _"Kill_ you?" This sets her off laughing, again, and Ken wonders why he's still standing here. Why isn't he running while she's distracted? God knows she could catch him easily, he's seen her do it, but at least he'd have tried. Once she's sobered, Bart shakes her head, "Yeah, I was. But I'm not doin’ that. I came here because I know you're good, and with a little persuasion, you can probably help me."

"With what?" Too many questions. Didn't Dirk say that she didn't like questions?

Bart sighs, dropping the gun on the carpet. This is the thing that surprises Ken the most. "I need to disappear."

"And you want _my_ help with that." Ken slowly crouches and begins to gather up his spilled groceries. She's just as dangerous, if not more, without the gun, but she doesn't seem to be in the mood for harming him.

"Well, you can forge shit, right?" She gets to her feet and Ken scrambles backwards, whacking his head into the door. Bart snorts at this. "Like death certificates and what have you?"

Ken blinks the black spots out of his eyes and rubs the back of his head to soothe the pain. "Sure, but I can't forge a _corpse."_ He says to her, and watches her take another step forward. He holds out a hand, a big _stop right where you fucking are._ She holds her hands up in mock-surrender, grinning. "And I know your people would want a corpse."

At this, she shrugs. _"I_ can."

Ken sits up properly against the door and runs his hands down his face. "You scare the shit out of me." He moans.

"It's my job, Kenny Boy." Bart tuts and kicks her gun towards him, almost a sign of peace. Ken picks up the gun and points it at her.

"Why are you running?" He asks, not even bothering to wonder why she doesn't look scared with the barrel of a loaded gun in her face. God knows she's probably dealt with worse, and if he's seeing right, the scars in her body say that she's endured worse.

"It's that or kill you. And for _some reason_ I _don't_ want to kill you." The humour fades from her face very quickly after saying this. She drops into a cross legged position and stares at the floor with a strained expression on her face. The two loose pigtails she’s pulled her ginger hair into hang in her eyes. It’s the cleanest he’s ever seen it. "I've disappointed ‘em too much. This would be the last straw. Even I don't know what they do to people they don't need, anymore."

That almost makes him drop the gun, she looks genuinely scared. He doesn't think she's ever looked that way in any other situation he's seen her in. Ken's seen her tied to a chair with a knife to her throat, and she grinned the whole time. But now Bart looks scared and that's enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

It's not enough, though, to make him drop the gun. He grips it with renewed vigour. "What about me?" Ken asks. "When you're gone, they'll probably trace it back to me."

She sets her hips with her tongue, stained slightly blue obviously by some lolly. Ken mourns his dinner plans. "That's the other half." Bart rasps. "If you do this you've gotta come with me."

"Where?" He questions, feeling reluctant to leave on her terms, no matter how tempting the idea is. Just leave forever, no debt, no rent, nothing to hold him down.

"Away." She answers, vaguely, waving a bloodied hand.

He exhales sharply through his nose, the small of his back pressing painfully to a stray boot, by the door. "Why would I want to?"

Bart raises her eyebrows, obviously back in good humour. "You've got nothing to stay for." She says, without fuss or preamble. He nearly groans; of course they briefed her on him. Why wouldn't they, if they sent her to kill him? "You’ve got your job, sure, but also rent and student loans and shit like that. You’re leading a pretty boring life that’ll probably continue being pretty boring unless you come with me. Also if I leave you, they’ll jus’ send someone else to kill you." She shrugs once again, and closes her hands over the toes of her shoes like a kindergartener. "I figure we help each other."

"You're crazy." Ken states.

"Maybe." She agrees, nonchalantly.

It feels so natural to trust her, going off how frank she is with him, how blunt, how no-nonsense. But if he lets his guard down it'll be his own fault if she kills him. "I've seen you kill. I've seen you _manipulate."_ She huffs to herself as he speaks, obviously irritated that he hasn't agreed, yet. "How can I trust you're not playing me?"

"You could search me, if you wanna." Bart suggests, gesturing to her bloodied clothes.

"Please don't take your clothes off." He says, quickly, when she reaches for the zip on her shorts. She's smiling, slightly, and Ken notices how the sky has darkened outside the windows.

Bart purses her lips. "Ken-"

"Why am I so special that you decided not to kill me?" He interrupts, and lets the hand holding her gun droop to his lap as he rises onto his knees. It's stupid to decide to trust her, but Ken can't help wondering why she'd go to all this trouble. If she's their quickest and most efficient agent, then why would she bother playing the long game? Why not strangle him to death now? Why not fling a hidden knife at him to impale him against his front door?

"You're not." Bart says, simply, breaking his reverie. "But you _are_ the guy who called an ambulance when I got shot."

Kens eyes widen. "How did you know I-?"

"’ey, you have your secrets and I have mine." She interrupts, and then taps the side of her nose, knowingly. Then she sighs. "So, what do you say? I help you, you help me? We drive off into the sunset?" Bart holds out a hand for him to shake.

He chews on his lip, staring at it. Then he looks back up at her, steel in his gaze. "I'm gonna need some collateral." Ken states.

"Collateral?" Bart echoes with furrowed eyebrows.

"Yeah. I need a reason to believe you." He elaborates, and gestures with the gun until he realises that's what's he's doing and drops it on his doormat.

Bart stares at the ceiling as she considers this, and pokes her tongue against the inside of her cheek, again. She clicks her fingers at him with a smile, a minute later. "What if I give you the code names to every agent in Blackwing, plus my handler's name?" She suggests, grinning with crooked teeth. Ken stays silent, so she continues. "You could send ‘em to whoever's in charge of the FBI right now, before we go off the grid so they'll have less incentive to hunt us down."

"Dammit, that's some good collateral." Ken mutters and rubs at his eyes.

He notices when she shuffles forward a bit more, but he doesn't move to stop her, already having made up his mind. "You gotta trust me, Ken." Her voice is the softest is the softest he's ever heard it, and the least raspy. She's not that close but he swears he can feel the heat radiating off her skin.

"Fuck it, fine." He says and when he pulls his hands from his eyes, she's grinning, again, and on her feet, jumping up and down like a child, as if she doesn’t have a near-fatal gunshot injury in her stomach that should be rested after surgery. "Let me grab my shit."

~

She gives him a few days to get his affairs in order, money out of his accounts, everything cleaned up, everything sorted out.

She eats all the food in his fridge and uses too much water when she showers and kicks him out of his own bed, making him pick between sleeping in the same bed as her and sleeping on the couch.

She makes him harbour a fugitive and lie to everyone who matters to him.

Bart relishes it all, even if Ken Adams is all she has left.

Maybe it’s just all the frustration and anger she has left against Priest that she just needs out of her system. Maybe she’s just getting restless being cooped up in Ken’s tiny apartment. Maybe her fingers are itching to kill.

Maybe she’s trying to get used to the fact that that’s not her anymore.

Ken comes home three days after he agreed to go with her, to find her eating pickles out of the jar, sitting on his kitchen counter. He sighs, “You’re like a bad-tempered cat.”

“D’ya want me to bite you like a bad-tempered dog?” She asks through a mouthful of pickle, gnashing her teeth at him, and Ken goes pale. She laughs. “Jus’ kiddin’. Won’t bite unless you ask.”

He avoids her for the rest of the day.

Bart tries to act better around him, well aware that he's uncomfortable around her. She supposes she would be too if their positions were swapped. If he had killed someone important to her and then told her she had to go on the run with him or die. She supposes he has every right to hate her.

“‘ey, Ken.” She whispers, one night, and he sits bolt upright on the couch, staring at him like she's about to hold a knife to his throat. He looks wide awake. “I'm sorry that I scare you.”

He frowns, looking less scared. “Bart, you've killed more than fifty people.” Ken says, completely serious. “I'm always going to be scared of you.”

Bart mashes her face into the pillow when she goes back to bed and tries not to dwell too much on the only person she has left being terrified of her.

~

The day he leaves, Ken tries not to act any different. He closes the case Farah gave him after Bart “disappeared” and hands it in. She tells him she'll have something new for him, the next day, and Ken nods, instead of telling her not to.

Todd and Dirk have left, already moving onto the next part of their lives, unsurprisingly together. They're still under protection from the FBI since everyone's sure that Blackwing will go after Dirk if they ever find him. Ken can't say goodbye, since they'd find it weird if he reached out only to tell them goodbye. They'd know something was up.

Ken finds all too soon that there's no one left for him to miss. He packs up a few possessions from his office that matter into his bag, and when he leaves in the evening, clicks off the light for the last time.

Bart’s there when he arrives home. She's already packed up what he wanted to take - they did part of that over breakfast and he left her a list to complete during the day. Now, they just need to trash his apartment to make it look like he was killed/kidnapped all _Gone Girl_ style, and run away.

Ken struggles through all of it, and thankfully Bart stays silent. She's become more and more subdued throughout the days they've spent together, especially after the night when he told her that he wouldn't stop being afraid of her. And it's true. But he still feels bad.

Ken leaves the door drifting open, gets in their getaway car, and begins to hack the security camera outside his apartment building, effectively getting rid of the footage of them leaving. Bart waits patiently at the wheel while he does this and once he gives her the signal that they're good to go, they pull out into the street, and begin to drive out of town.

They pull into the first motel off the highway out of town. Bart’s got her hair pulled back into a bun and sunglasses on to try and hide her identity if anyone recognises her. Ken pretends she's drunk when they book in, and guides her to their room. The woman behind the corner barely grunts in their direction.

~

“There’s one bed.” Bart states, standing beside the aforementioned bed and looking over her shoulder at Ken. It's a rather bland room to begin with - a box TV, a tiny leather couch, one poster of an impressionist painting framed above the bed. It obviously hasn't been refurbished since the eighties, taking in the carpet and wallpaper choices, and it smells like too much Febreeze.

Ken looks up and looks between her and the bed. “There was one bed back at my house.” He states, calmly, and turns back to keep digging through his bag. “Wasn't a problem then.”

Bart frowns at him, dumping her messenger bag in the ground and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I can't make you sleep on the couch, again.” She tells him, honestly. She feels bad for kicking him out of his bed in the first place, and now that they're actually on the run, she feels even worse. “You've gotta be gettin’ back problems by now.”

 _“You_ want to take the couch?” He questions without looking at her.

“Why can’t we jus’ share the bed?” Bart huffs.

“You want me, an FBI agent, to share a bed with you, a serial killer?” Ken asks, turning around, fully and crossing his arms over his chest. She meets his eyes and for a second he doesn't look nearly as tough as he's trying to sound. “Yeah, it's a big-ass no from me.”

“You're already on the run with me,” she comments, quietly, opening her bag and taking out her designated pyjama clothes to get changed into. “How much worse can it get?”

“Ooh, trusting you is up there.” Ken responds, and turns his back as she crosses to the other side of the room to get changed. “Along with sharing a bed with you. I'd rather sleep on the couch and risk my back.”

“This road trip ain't gonna be any fun if you're a wet blanket the whole time.” Bart mutters, tugging off her t-shirt.

“Sorry, did I forget to mention that you're a wanted serial killer, and that scares the shit out of me?” Ken snaps, sounding ready to leave her behind in this hotel room. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. It's not like she can't steal another car. But would he even know how to evade the police? The FBI? _Blackwing?_ No. She can't risk his life just for the ease of being alone. “Did I forget to mention that this could all be a long con, and at any point you could pull out a knife to kill me and there'd be nothing I could do about it?”

“I already told you - they were usin’ me for political gain. They torture kids they kidnap into believin’ that doin’ what Blackwin’ wants is what's best for them, and they go on believin’ that until somethin’ in ‘em snaps.” She watches him flinch at the word _snaps._ “Ask Dirk. _He_ snapped. _I've_ snapped. I'm over it. No more killin’ for me.”

“I've _seen_ you kill people.” He insists, apparently unwilling to listen to a word she says. It frustrates her to no end that he doesn't understand what she's gone through to get to this point. “You don't have a _problem_ with it.”

“I didn't used to when I thought it was for the greater good. Now that I know that they're just people Blackwin’ wants out of the way I know that I've been lied to and used. Yes, I did those thin’s, but you have to understand that I was seven when they took me away from my mom.” She tugs off her shorts and gestures to her body, well aware of how she must look in this light, well aware of how much vulnerability she's showing him, how much Blackwing got to her. “They _tortured_ me until I was scared to disobey ‘em, they trained me so hard I cried myself to sleep every night for years. The first time I killed somebody I didn't sleep for weeks, and when they finally got me to submit to bein’ an assassin I basically disassociated for all of it.”

Ken stares at her, stares at the scars on her skin, the puckered ones that made her black out when they were inflicted and wake up with chafed and bloodied wrists from the manacles, the shallow ones that were just the flick of a knife, the calm before the storm. She doesn't want him to feel bad, she just wants him to understand that she didn't realise what she was doing was wrong until it was too late.

Or maybe she did know it was wrong, but doing it seemed better than what awaited if she refused.

“You don't have to stop bein’ scared of me, you don't even have to forgive me for what I've done, but what you _do_ have to know is that I'm _not_ that person anymore.” She looks away and pulls her pyjama bottoms on, coving up most of the scars. “I barely know who she is. _She’s_ their tool, and she was crafted from _pain_ and _manipulation.”_

Bart tugs on her pyjama top, pulls back the covers of the bed, roughly, and crawls underneath, tears stinging her eyes. She leaves room behind her, just in case Ken changes his mind. She falls asleep, restlessly, before she can find out.

~

Ken sits on the balcony for a long time. He knows Bart is asleep because her quiet heaving breaths slowed and evened out. His legs are dangling through the railing and his forehead is pressed to the cold of it. It is getting colder, barely any leaves on the trees anymore. Soon it will be cold enough to snow.

He tries to imagine what it would have been like if he’d been taken from his family as a child. Can't even begin to comprehend the pain that's been inflicted upon Bart, can't even imagine what it was like for her, seven years old and kidnapped by a secret underground organisation, turned into a mindless killer.

He doesn't know how that makes her feel. He doesn't know if she feels guilty or not.

Ken thinks of Patrick, of the way Lydia had cried while pressing her cardigan to his chest, the way she'd screamed for the paramedics to help her when they arrived. How she'd crumpled in the hallway when they came out to tell them all that he hadn't made it. How Patrick will never tell them corny jokes anymore.

And, of course, it’s her fault that he’s no longer working his dream job.

And, of course, he'd be dead if he stayed.

Ken breathes out, deeply, and tries to rationalise it all in his head. In a way, he supposes, she's right. None of this will work if he continues to make her the villain. If she was the villain, she would have run without him and left him to be taken out by someone else. She's better than that - _somehow._

He's got to sort out his feelings on her. Yes, she's killed people, yes, she's killed someone important to him, yes, she's incredibly dangerous, even without intent to harm him. But, then again, she hasn't made any move to harm him, not even when she was instructed to. She seemed genuinely upset when he implied that she'd cut his throat in the middle of the night, just for the fun of it. She seemed upset that he didn't trust her, yet.

Bart was abused and forced into the position he found her in, and now that she's free he's just making her out to be the one in the wrong.

Ken closes his eyes.

He's got to let it all go, and try to start fresh the way she is. After all, it's not like he's got anywhere to be, or anything to prove.

~

She wakes when he pulls the covers back and crawls underneath. He’s warm beside her.

“Changed your mind?” She mumbles, but she doesn't think he really hears it.

There's a long moment where they just lie there, side by side in the bed they've bought for the night. Bart’s almost back asleep when she hears Ken say, “Something like that.”

~

They don't talk the next day; Ken has his earphones in while he drives, so Bart finds out what's in the CD player, and plays that as loud as she possibly can without annoying Ken.

They pull over for gas and food a few times, and at every single stop Bart picks up some kind of clothing to wear. A wide brimmed straw hat, some girlish heart-shaped sunglasses, a halterneck top, some shorts patterned with flamingos.

Ken asks her what she's doing when she buys a pair of flip-flops. Bart shrugs. “People’re goin’ to start noticin’ us when your face starts appearin’ on TV - and trust me, it will.” Bart holds up the flip-flops triumphantly. “I figure we both put together some disguises.”

Ken frowns, but picks up a stupid straw hat, anyway.

A few hours later, after Bart’s thrown the CD out the window, tired of every song, she turns to him and says, “You should grow a beard.”

He grimaces at her, obviously missing what she said, and tugs one of his earphones out, side eyeing her. “Huh?”

“I said you should grow a beard.” Bart repeats, and stretches in her seat, propping her feet up on the dashboard. Ken gives them a half-hearted push, but, when he finds her unyielding, rolls his eyes and lets it go.

“Why?” He asks, relenting to the conversation, tugging his other earphone out and letting it drop in his lap.

“So that people won't recognise you.” She informs him in the most _duuuh_ tone possible. “You're _on the run,_ you don't wanna get recognised.”

 _“Every_ guy who goes on the run grows a beard.” Ken grumbles, disgruntled that she's right. “That's too cliché.”

“Well, I'm gonna dye my hair.” Bart says, cheerily, popping open the mirror on her sun shield and ruffling it a bit. “People will recognise a white redhead like me if they're gonna accuse me of kidnappin’ you and flash my face all over America’s TV’s.”

A pause in the conversation. She can hear the soft music playing from his abandoned earphones. It's something with a fast drumbeat and a tinny voice singing all off beat. “What colour are you gonna dye it?” He suddenly asks, eyes on the road, ahead.

“Probably brown.” She replies.

“Dyeing your hair is pretty cliché, too, you know.” Ken informs her.

“What can I tell you, Kenny Boy?” Bart sighs, stealing his earphones and popping one in her ear, offering him the spare one. “You and I are walkin’ cliché’s.”

~

They book into a hotel by the sea with fake names, and Ken pretends not be shocked when Bart puts on a fake accent and acts the part of his newly wedded wife, on their honeymoon. Once they're in their giant hotel room, she flops down on the bed, and groans.

“That bullshit is almost worth these sheets.” Bart informs him, staring at the ceiling, still wearing her sunglasses. She waves him over. “Ken, come over here, it's like lyin’ on a _cloud.”_

“I'm good.” He replies, dropping their bags by the couch.

Bart sits up and scowls at him. Somehow, despite the heart-shaped sunglasses, she still manages to look dangerously put out. “Don't tell me you're gonna sleep on the couch, again. We both know how that ended, last time.”

Ken shrugs, looking away from her.

“Seriously?” She cries, slapping her hands down on the soft covers she was complimenting only moments ago. _Ken_ took that from her. “Are you _still_ scared of me, after _everythin’?_ Do you really _think_ that if I wanted to _kill_ you I'd go along with all of this?”

He opens his mouth to respond, and looks up. Bart’s on her feet, her sunglasses pushed out of the way. She looks properly upset, not like the kind of upset she'd been in the motel room where he'd seen her scars. _Properly_ upset. She holds up her hands and stalks past him, going for her bag. “No, you know what, it's fine. You're all set up here, and I can get anywhere I want.” Bart mumbles, sounding dejected and upset. “You're jus’ _dead weight._ Goodbye, Ken.”

Ken is making a bad decision, he can tell that even as he moves to make it. She doesn't pull away when he grabs her wrist, again, but she does give him a look, a look that says _touch me again and you'll be dead,_ but Ken doesn't heed the warning. Her eyes widen further, as he tugs her close, and her hands come up to push at his chest. He wonders, through the daze that has him holding this girl, if anyone's ever taken the time to touch her gently.

Ken thinks even if she's never been gentle with him that she deserves gentleness.

“What are you doin’?” Bart growls.

“Don't leave.” Ken says, and bites his lip, afraid that maybe he's given too much away. Everything's gone, anyway, though. What else has he got left to lose? Just her. Just her, if she leaves. He'll be lost if she does.

“Why shouldn't I?” Bart asks, but she's not pushing away from him. Her fingers are soft of curled in the fabric of his top. “There's a whole world out there, Ken. You and me…we just melt into the background.”

“I don't want to melt into the background.” He tells her honestly. “And I don't want to lose you again.”

“Again?” Bart questions, curiously, and then he can't focus on the wideness of her eyes, because he's kissing Bart. Ken pulls away, a second later, assessing how dead he is to her, and finds her staring, in shock. Then, as suddenly as he pulled away, she's tugging him into her, and she's attempting to kiss him back with way too much teeth and sharp as hell nails.

So, obviously she's never kissed anyone before. Ken has, on a dare. So that's one kiss more than her, presumably, that he has under his belt, and this one just fucking sucks.

He doesn't know why he did it, he doesn't know what he expected. Maybe he was just expecting her to be a fantastic kisser and, what? Become, like, a completely different person and decide to stay, decide to forgive him? Ken doesn't even know. What he does know, is that this kiss is wrong and it's up to him to fix it.

Ken tips his head a bit and Bart follows, which isn't great, because it's the same, slightly awful kiss, but at a different and more awkward angle. And now she's replaced her teeth with tongue. That wouldn't be such a problem if she was any good at it. Ken gives up.

Bart looks deathly pale even under the yellow light from the bedside lamps, but her cheeks and nose are flushed pink from cold outside and from the kiss, her lips all swollen red. She looks dazed, and a little taken aback, her hands still outstretched as if they were still holding his shoulders.

"What the hell was that?" She asks, voice grainy as always.

"I'm sorry.” He responds. Bart frowns.

“Why are you apologisin’ for kissin’ me?”

“Oh, there are so many reasons why I should apologise for that, but I'm only really apologising for not trusting you sooner.” She cocks her head to the side, confused. He can't imagine anything about this exchange makes sense,at the moment. He continues, “I mean, you've been nothing but open to me since we met - you've been honest, you never led me on about anything, and I still dragged my feet about you. So, I'm sorry.”

Bart stares at him, dumbstruck, apparently. Ken wonders, idly, if anyone's ever apologised to her. Wonders if anyone's had a reason. “Oh.” She says, as if it's all she can make herself say.

He shuffles, awkwardly, on the spot. When did her sunglasses fall on the ground? “Bart?” Ken says, softly. “It's okay if you don't want to talk right now, I just-”

“Could you stop talkin’ and kiss me again?” She interrupts, rushing her words. Ken looks up sharply, and meets her slightly embarrassed gaze. “Think I did it wrong.”

So, this is how his story goes, is it? Ken thinks he's okay with that.

 

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this! If you liked it, please let me know all about it in the comments! Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee. Once, again, thanks for reading.


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